Restaurant, Hotel, and Building Service Workers I.U. 640

This page displays *all* news items from Restaurant, Hotel, and Building Service Workers Industrial Union 640.

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Starbucks Fires Outspoken Barista Over Union Activity

Posted Fri, 06/06/2008 - 12:54pm by IWW.org Editor

Grand Rapids firing comes in the midst of Unfair Labor Practice charges being investigated by the NLRB against Starbucks.

Grand Rapids, MI (06/06/2008)- Starbucks terminated a barista active in the IWW Starbucks Workers Union today as part of its ongoing effort to combat a growing movement of employees pushing for a living wage and secure work hours. The barista, Cole Dorsey, was fired after two years of service while he was coordinating a union recruitment drive at Starbucks stores in Grand Rapids. Starbucks' pretext for the illegal anti-union firing was that Dorsey was guilty of some months-old attendance infractions.

"Today I joined the growing number of baristas that Starbucks has fired in its relentless union-busting campaign," said Cole Dorsey. "Starbucks' disrespect for the right to join a union is appalling and absolutely will not stop our efforts to have a voice at work."

Icy Day Finds Old Union Outside Modern City Shops

Posted Tue, 01/22/2008 - 12:31pm by x360279
The New York Times

By COLIN MOYNIHAN
Published: January 22, 2008

The dramatic battles of the American labor movement were often fought in hazardous settings like the coal fields of Kentucky or the textile mills of Massachusetts.

In recent times, though, a different type of labor dispute has become familiar in New York, focused on the retail outlets that keep upscale customers fed and caffeinated.

And so it was that a crowd of about 50 people wrapped in scarves and bandannas against the cold gathered Monday morning outside a Starbucks at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 33rd Street.

Worker Self-management threatened at the HOTEL BAUEN in Buenos Aires

Posted Tue, 08/14/2007 - 1:56pm by x344543

Disclaimer - the following is not an IWW campaign, but is of interest to IWW members and supporters.

Inside the BAUEN Hotel, one of Argentina's worker-run workplaces, janitors, repairmen, receptionists and maids sit in an assembly with worried but determined faces and sheets of paper in hand. Each of the workers, some of whom have been working at the hotel since it was built in 1978, hold a court ordered eviction notice, a judicial document notifying the workers they must abandon the hotel or police will force them to leave.

After four years of successful worker management, a federal court issued a 30 day eviction notice to the workers of the hotel on July 20. However, this is the first court ordered eviction that the workers cooperative has had to fight. Argentina's recuperated enterprises are mobilizing to fight this new attack against workers' determination. If the workers do not successfully block the eviction order legally or through political actions the hotel could be lost and 150 workers out of a job.

After the hotel's 2001 closure, left with no other option, on March 21, 2003 the workers decided to take over the hotel to safeguard their livelihood and defend their jobs. Since 2003, workers have operated the BAUEN cooperative hotel, a 20 story building in the very heart of Buenos Aires. The BAUEN cooperative, like many of the recuperated enterprises was forced to start up production without any legal backing whatsoever. The BAUEN Hotel workers' cooperative currently employs more than 150 workers, all working without bosses, supervisors or owners but instead within a democratic workplace.

Starlit inaugurations and fraudulent bankruptcy

The BAUEN Hotel was inaugurated for the 1978 World Cup, during the height of the military dictatorship. As the military dictatorship disappeared 30,000 workers, students and activists inside a network of clandestine detention centers, Argentina celebrated the 1978 world cup victory. Hotel BAUEN's original owner, Marcelo Iurcovich, celebrated as well. He received more than five million dollars to construct the 20-story hotel, with a government loan from the National Development Bank (BANADE), with the military dictatorship's blessings.

Iurcovich, never held the hotel up to safety inspection codes and never paid back state loans. He ran up debts and committed tax evasion while making millions of dollars in profits and acquiring two more hotels. In 1997, Iurcovich sold the hotel to the business group Solari S.A. The Solari group followed in Iurcovich's footsteps, never paying the BANADE debt. With little interest in the profitability and maintenance of the hotel, the installations at the BAUEN deteriorated until the Solari group filed bankruptsy in 2001.

On December 28, 2001, after the management began systematic firings and emptied out the hotel, the remaining 80 workers were left in the streets in the midst of Argentina's worst economic crisis and when unemployment hit record levels-over 20% unemployed and 40% of the population unable to find adequate employment. Gabriel Quevedo, president of the BAUEN cooperative says that the workers created jobs when investors and industrialists were fleeing the country. "The workers took on responsibility when the country was in full crisis and unemployment over 20 percent, where workers couldn't find work. The workers formed a cooperative and created jobs, when no one believed that it was possible."

New working culture

In the aftermath of the 2001 economic crisis, more than 180 factories and businesses have been recuperated by the workers and today provide jobs for more than 10,000 Argentine workers. Arminda Palacios is a seamstress who has worked at the hotel for over 20 years and was one of the key people who decided to cut off the locks on a side entrance into the hotel on March 28, 2001. She defines the BAUEN hotel as simply more than a cooperative that defends jobs. "Socially we have proved to the people that workers can run a business. This is one of our main motives, because people believe that the capitalists are the only ones who can run a business, and we are proving the contrary especially since we've created 150 jobs."

When the workers first occupied the hotel, it was in ruins. It wasn't until nearly a year after they occupied the hotel that they were able to begin renting out services. Before the workers took home a single paycheck, they reinvested all capital back into the hotel. They have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into the hotel's infrastructure: renovating the front café, hotel rooms, fire proofing salons and reopening the pool area.

Elena is a receptionist in her late 20's, who says she and her fellow workers have sacrificed a lot to defend their jobs. "They didn't have to throw us out into the streets on December 28, 2001, because the hotel had enough business, but the businessmen allowed the hotel to go to ruins and we had to leave. We have renovated the hotel and successfully opened up a hotel that was closed. Now that they see that the hotel is successful, they want to take it away from us."

In addition to creating jobs, the BAUEN hotel has become a key organizing space for activists around the city. During an assembly on July 23, workers from all around the country came to show their support. "Without the BAUEN, our internal union commission wouldn't have formed," one worker from the Buenos Aires casino said. Dozens of other workers representing emerging rank and file unionists stressed the importance that BAUEN has had on organizing and coordinating workers' struggles. On a local level, BAUEN Hotel has become a prime example of coalition building and development of a broad mutual support network. In the midst of legal struggles and successfully running a prominent hotel, the cooperative's members haven't forgotten their roots. The 19-story worker run hotel has become a political center for movement organizing and a modern day commune.

Current fight against eviction

The court ordered the eviction notice in favor of the Mercoteles business group, which claims to have purchased the hotel from Solari in 2006, when the BAUEN workers cooperative was already inside the hotel administering services. The president of Mercoteles, Samuel Kaliman, is Iurcovich's brother in law. In court last year, Kaliman was unable to provide the court with Mercoteles' address, board member names and other legal information.

Legal advisors and the workers suspect that the Mercoteles is a ghost business group with little legal legitimacy and ties to the Solari group. According to Isabel Sequeira, in her 11 years working at the hotel under a boss she had seen many questionable administrative changes. "Mercoteles is a ghost company. When I worked at the hotel under bosses there were many sneaky administrative changes. We had many 'bosses' that changed on a regular basis."

The Hotel workers also face another bigger challenge, a newly elected right-wing mayor, Mauricio Macri. Macri, a business tycoon and son of privatization, won the city-wide elections in June. As part of his campaign, he has promised to clear out any 'okupas' or "squats" in the city. In the week that the BAUEN hotel received the eviction notice, more than 12 housing squats in the city were forcefully evicted. Macri, will take office in December.

When the eviction notice came, the hotel was booked for winter break vacation. The notice couldn't have come at a worst time. However, workers and supporters have mobilized fast. In front of the Buenos Aires central courts on August 5 nearly 2,000 came out to defend the hotel. The workers cooperative presented an appeal and will continue to lobby for the definitive legal right to the hotel.

"We believe that fighting within the legal system isn't enough. That's why we are prepared to fight in the streets, where we are stronger," said Fabio Resino, a legal advisor at the hotel during an assembly. "We ask social organizations to take on the fight for BAUEN as a fight of their own, because the BAUEN hotel belongs to the people."

The BAUEN workers' cooperative has embarked on a national campaign to defend their hotel and jobs. The campaign is gaining steam as the eviction date nears in late August. Groups have planned a series of concerts and rallies with rock stars and other television personalities supporting the workers for the legitimate right to defend their livelihood.

Marie Trigona is a writer, radio reporter and filmmaker based in Argentina. She can be reached at mtrigona [at] msn.com To watch a video on the BAUEN struggle visit www.agoratv.org

 

Lessons of MWR - Interview with former McDonalds Workers Resistance member, 2006

Posted Wed, 01/03/2007 - 11:53am by x344543

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.

libcom.org interviews one of the founder members of the workplace group McDonalds Workers Resistance about the experiences and lessons learned from one of the UK's most important attempts at libertarian organisation in recent years.

So, who are you?

The proletarian formerly known as Funnywump.

Briefly, what was McDonald’s Workers Resistance?

It was the sexiest rebellion ever launched in a burger bar. It was a name adopted by a group of McDonald’s employees working at a restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. We publicised MWR and encouraged workers at other McDonald’s to participate. The name was adopted by groups of workers around the UK and abroad, and the movement involved hundreds of people who didn’t previously know each other through radical politics!

Organizing the Unorganizable - The Unlikely Spark for a Rebirth of Labor

Posted Mon, 10/02/2006 - 2:31pm by x344543

Disclaimer - The following article is reposted here because it is an issue with some relevance to the IWW. The views of the author do not necessarily agree with those of the IWW and vice versa.

By Ruth Milkman - Boston Review, September 29, 2006

In 1990, after a few years of intensive organizing, a group of immigrant janitors in Los Angeles went on strike, endured a brutal police beating, and then won union recognition. All but invisible to the public, these workers cleaned up after hours for the well-paid lawyers and other professionals who inhabit the glitzy office towers of Century City, an upscale section of Los Angeles. Most were immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many of them undocumented. Like countless other foreign-born workers who populate the lower echelons of southern California's vast blue- collar labor market, they worked long hours for minimal pay, often under substandard (and sometimes illegal) conditions.

The Century City victory was a turning point for the national "Justice for Janitors" campaign of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which would go on to win a series of contracts guaranteeing improved wages and working conditions for an ever- growing number of southern-California janitors, as well as janitors in several other U.S. cities. By the end of the century the local janitors' union not only had consolidated its position within the L.A. building- services industry but had also become one of the most dynamic and politically influential labor unions in the city and a vocal advocate for its burgeoning population of low-wage Latino immigrant workers.

In numerical terms, the janitors' triumph was an insignificant development, involving only a few thousand workers in the nation's second-largest city. Yet in the early 1990s, after decades of deunionization and in an extremely unfavorable political climate, any progress in the U.S. labor movement was a notable achievement. In the once-legendary "company town" of Los Angeles it was especially impressive. And the fact that the protagonists included undocumented immigrants - long presumed to be "unorganizable" - seemed almost miraculous. The janitors' success sparked a resurgence of union organizing and community- based economic-justice campaigns in Los Angeles, a wave of activity that has since spread across the nation - highlighting the potential for a broader labor resurgence.